Leaving (quit)

You can stop using Purpose Source for future releases at any time. Change LICENSE to a licence you have the right to apply. There is no exit fee, minimum term, notification form or Association approval.

This is the process for Purpose Source License 1.0, published on 2026-10-01. As when adopting, existing contributor rights and notices remain in place.

The exit, step by step

Choose the licence for future releases, with the necessary rights in the code.
Change LICENSE and retain third-party notices.
Remove PURPOSE.yml if you no longer want it; it is optional operational metadata.
Tell users which release marks the change. No separate notification to the Association is required.

Changing a file does not supply missing rights or revoke permissions already granted. If contributions came in on terms that do not permit your proposed new licence, obtain the required permission or choose a compatible route.

What happens to your registry entry

The registry follows the repository’s licence change. A registered project keeps its permanent record, marked quit with the date. Its badge becomes neutral and it leaves the active-project list. Past ledger rows and valid historical certificates remain available.

Relisting follows the same adoption and registration rules as before. There is no penalty for having left.

Vesting consequences, precisely

For a version within a credential’s scope:

It is vested if its publication date falls on or before the end of the credential’s term.

That coverage is permanent. A project leaving does not remove a company’s rights in versions already covered. Releases published afterwards follow the terms that apply to those releases; an old Entitlement does not grant rights in unrelated future code.

Purpose Fees are paid to the Association, not to the project. Any question about the purchase agreement belongs under the Entitlement terms.

The parts of adoption that survive the exit

Earlier releases keep the terms they were published under.
Each Purpose Source release keeps its own four-year Apache-2.0 conversion date.
Vested coverage remains intact.
Existing third-party notices and contributor rights remain intact.
Public funding records continue to show what happened while the project participated.

The fork question, on exit

A published release can still be forked under its own terms. Leaving does not change that permission, just as joining could not change the licence of an earlier permissive release.

Why there is no penalty

The Association does not own the code it registers for others and does not require a mandate or contract to adopt the licence. Your project controls its future direction. The registry records the change while preserving the rights and history that already exist.